'Mr Hardy, I was head over heels in blind love. I'd be inventing if I said that from my point of view the answer to your questions was anything but sex, sex, sex.'
8
I went to the outdoor coffee area where Burton Street hits Crown, ordered a flat white and sat down with my notebook to make my usual squiggles, arrows and dotted lines. They're supposed to help me make connections and to inspire questions and speculations. Sometimes they do, and once or twice the process has led me definitively through a maze in the right direction. Mostly, they just help to make the maze clearer.
Roma Brown was a fresh source, virtually untapped by the police. If Wain or one of the other PEAs had talked to her she certainly would have mentioned it. A fresh source when investigating an old matter on which the dust has settled is pure gold. She'd given me things to think about. If she was right about Heysen doing makeovers of some sort for shady customers, it could explain why he had the substantial equity Simmonds had mentioned. Equally, it could have put him in danger if one of his clients was either dissatisfied or took it into his head to take the doctor out of circulation. The possibilities were many.
A complication to this line of thinking was the evidence that Heysen was strapped for cash at the time of Bellamy's death. Had the makeover business dried up? And if so, why? Was he being blackmailed? And if so, by whom?
All that was assuming that someone had framed Heysen for Bellamy's murder. But what if Bellamy had found out about his partner's illicit activities and had hired Padrone to silence him and been outbid by Heysen? Guilty as charged, but a tangled and very speculative web. If Cassidy and Wain had known about Heysen's sideline and hushed it up, what might've followed from that? Getting to be too much to hold in my head. I drank the coffee and sketched out the various scenarios as a series of questions. One course of action was clear-find Karl Lubeck, the medical Lothario.
The coffee tables and umbrellas were located in a space dropped down below the level of Crown Street that's reached by a set of sandstone steps. A bit of old Sydney town preserved-something I always like to see. A much- touted vegetarian restaurant is opposite, along with boutiques and minute art galleries. There are plenty of sex shops around selling what they sell, and I suppose people seeing Roma Brown in her wheelchair would think they were irrelevant to her. They'd be dead wrong, I thought, and good on her.
Back in the Mitchell Library, and I set about the task of tracking Dr Karl methodically, consulting first the telephone directories in all the capital cities, knowing the reluctance of doctors to go bush. No result. Then the medical directory which covers the whole country and is never completely up to date but catches most of the long- termers. Ditto.
I stood on the steps outside the library as the rain fell, and rang my doctor, Ian Sangster, who sits on various medical boards and tribunals and has extensive contacts in the profession.
'This was when?' Ian asked.
'Twenty-three years ago.'
'Could be dead, it's a high stress profession.'
'He'd only be sixty or so.'
'What was his lifestyle?'
'All I know is that he liked sex and I'm told he was good at it.'
'That's a life-preserving recipe. Sorry, Cliff, never heard of him, but I'll ask around. D'you know anything more about him? Any chance he was deregistered somewhere along the line?'
'Possible, but that's all I've got at present.'
'I can check that. I'll let you know if he turns up.'
Not much more to be done there for the moment. There was no mention of a Dr Lubeck in Frank's notes or at the trial. Either the police didn't find out about him or Cassidy and Wain knew of him but suppressed the information. Why? Maybe because they were concealing everything to do with Heysen's sideline. Again, why? Good question. Possible answers were a pay-off or fear. On the basis of Wain's reaction, I'd have to go along with fear. But of whom or what?
Another name I had a question mark beside was Pixie Padrone. I was still curious about what had happened to the alleged fee for the hit. I added a question mark beside the twenty grand. Wain had said that Pixie was on the street, meaning that she was in the lower echelon of sex workers-the least paid, the most exploited, the most vulnerable. In that shadowy world people disappear, change their names, change their sex and are hard to track.
I had a source of information though-Ruby Gentle is the proprietor of the House of Ruby, a massage parlour and relaxation centre in Kings Cross. I'd located her lost daughter some years back, got a protection racketeer off her back, and we've remained on friendly terms. I hadn't seen her since I'd left Darlinghurst for Newtown, but this was definitely the time to renew the acquaintance.
The House of Ruby is open twenty-four hours a day and Ruby herself is in attendance until the early hours in a supervisory and occasionally participatory capacity. It was mid-afternoon on a Friday and I knew she'd be there.
I hit the buzzer beside the gate in Darlinghurst Road and the voice spoke softly just above my right ear.
'Can I help you?'
'You can tell Ruby that Cliff Hardy is here to see her, thank you.'
After a few minutes the gate swung open and I went through the scrap of garden to the front door, which clicked open as I approached. The woman behind the desk was typical of Ruby's receptionists-thirty plus, smartly turned out, expertly made up and with a pleasant voice and manner. 'She said to go upstairs, Mr Hardy, and that you know your way.'
'I do, thanks.'
Your two-storey Victorian terraces all follow much the same pattern on the upper level, with a large room in front, usually with a balcony, and other smaller rooms off a corridor going towards the back. The design is ideal for a brothel and a good many of them have served that purpose. Ruby, naturally, occupied the front room where she'd installed an ensuite and partitioned off a cubbyhole for her office. The remaining space isn't subtle in decor-a big four-poster bed with silk and satin trappings, two padded, velvet covered chairs, a wall mirror, a cabinet for professional equipment and a television with VCR and DVD players.
The door was standing open and I walked in. Ruby rose from a chair and sailed towards me like a galleon in a strong wind. She stands close to 180 centimetres in her stilettos and weighs close to 100 kilos. Wrapped in flowing draperies-'Rubensesque' is how she describes herself- that description about does it. She has black hair, pale skin and heavy, handsome features all owing a great deal to art.
'Cliff, darling,' she said as we embraced. 'I've longed for this day.'
'Come off it, Rube.' I slapped her ample rump. 'This is a business call.'
She laughed. 'What else, you old bastard. There was a time when I thought you might take off your trench coat and have a little fun.'
'I've never worn a trench coat in my life, and just now I'm having all the fun I need, thanks very much.'
'Amateurs,' she said as she subsided into a chair. 'Okay, waste some of my time.'
I sat and felt the soft padding ooze around me. I could almost sense the many gentlemen's trousers that had been draped over the chair.
'I'm looking for a working girl, Rube, but my last piece of information goes back over twenty years.'
While she's no saint and has played very rough in her time, Ruby has genuine concern for the people she employs and others in the sex business. She shook her head sadly. 'Not many survive that long, mate.'
'I know it's a long shot. This woman's name was Pixie Padrone. I thought you-'
Ruby sat bolt upright, her upholstered breasts heaving. 'Pixie, that bitch!'
'You know her?'
'I should. She was on the street like you say, a real low-life. Asked me for a spot but she was a hopeless junkie and she'd had more claps than a symphony orchestra. Then all of a sudden she's cleaned up her act. She's off the shit and working out of a flash flat in Point Piper. She took away some of my business for a while and didn't she
